I didn’t publish a blog for years. After my move to Los Angeles from South Florida, things inside of me shifted, like my consciousness was tectonic plates and my life was the resulting earthquake. I wasn’t sure who I was anymore or what I had to say or why anyone would want to listen. My professional creative life was the casualty. After over a decade cultivating a readership, I didn’t want to be “followed.” I didn’t have any idea where I was going.

Now, I know some would say, “Hey, that’s the kind of thing that sells…those dark periods, that descent, that drama.” But the truth is, I’d pimped out myself as a writing persona for so long in alternative media, I wasn’t even sure what the real me sounded like or what she had say. I knew I didn’t think mean was funny (Actually, I never did. I was coached to write that way by an editor). I needed to find myself.

(I bet you can relate to that. I’m sure there’s been a time in your life when you didn’t know what to say or what your leadership was. Maybe that time is now. I’m here to tell you: It’s okay.)

In the hiatus, I lowered my expectations and stopped engaging in the activities that triggered “old Marya” behavior. But I didn’t stop writing. In fact, I wrote a lot. In fact, I need to write my projects down now to prove my accomplishments, even if only to myself, so here it goes (I encourage you to take stock of your accomplishments, too.):

My first improv comedy class show. @ M.I. Westside Comedy.

I wrote a few articles for Palm Beach ArtsPaper about my experiences in California. I wrote a narrative essay “Trapped” about childhood traumas and escapism, and I performed at Spark Off Rose. I wrote lots about yoga philosophy and practices and how these could be applied to the writing process. I was asked to present on my research at the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association Conference, and then I was asked to submit that paper, “Writing East to West: A Yogic Approach to Life Writing,” to a new book project, Beyond the Frontier: Innovations in First-Year Composition. I also wrote a lot of poems and essays that I have left unpolished and stored unceremoniously on a flash drive. Oh, and I spent a year doing improv comedy…quite badly, in fact.

None of these projects were things I was sure of. (Some days I still wonder about what I’m doing with my life: a yogic approach to writing?) I struggled because what I was doing was new for me. I’d left behind the smartass, hard drinking, shameless Marya Summers that I’d capitalized on in South Florida. It’s hard to invent yourself, but it’s harder to strip down the persona and show up authentically, with no mask to shield you. I have been cultivating humility and grace; it’s made my humor gentler and wiser, I think.

Now, I’m back. It’s not a new Marya, it’s the real Marya. As myself, I’m vastly more… I was going to say more Zen, but I had been zooming around on a endless tank of an ego-boosted fuel blend of anxiety and shame in the opposite direction of Zen for so long that, now, even being in the zip code of Zen seems like some serious Sci-Fi technology.

My point is that transformation is possible, and it’s never too late to start. But you have to let go of something if you want to reach for something else. You have to be brave enough to trust that you are enough.